Deciphering Substance amongst the Superficial - The year it began to change.

It was during my second last high school year that everything seemed to go wrong. I began getting the worst nosebleeds ever. I would be in the shower at 11 p.m. after dance class and all of a sudden the entire cubical was red. It would really gush and I became extremely anemic during this time. The worse I felt the less I wanted to eat, and I lost a bit of weight without realizing it. But others saw it, and with makeup plastered over my dark under eyes, they complimented me, saying I looked lean and fit. I didn’t feel it, I felt dead but maybe this was just the beginning of a healthier life. I had at the time also been trying to cut sugar out of my diet with a group of girls from the hostel and so I figured this was just the ‘down’ phase until my body got used to this new ‘sugar-free’ zone. I Didn’t take a whole lot of notice regarding my weight, but it did feel good to be in control of some aspect of myself since everything else seemed to be a bit off health wise.

I got some iron injections (which let me tell you is quite the experience … a massive long needle gets inserted into the top of your glute muscle … yes it hurts… even more so if you tense!... top tip DON’T tense) slowly my iron returned to an ok level, I think my ferritin peaked at 34 that year and I felt great. It was a drastic improvement from the previous reading of 6, but my iron saturation was still very low and so my body couldn’t really use what was there. Running started to pick up again with the iron injections, I got high marks in my latest ballet exam, and so with a slight decrease in stress, I felt 80% back into life.

In October of that year I was lucky enough to take part in a Youth development program in New Zealand called "Spirit of Adventure" it is a program where 40 high school students get thrown on a traditional tall ship "The Spirit of New Zealand" and spend 10 days at sea without cell phones or connection to the outside world while learning to sail a ship! learning to actually communicate with each other, and work as a team was exhilarating and empowering. It was undeniably the best 10 days of my life. Every morning we would wake up at 6 a.m. and jump overboard into the freezing water, swim around the ship and then scramble back up the ladder (it was FREEZING) but I loved it! Of the many things we did, my favorite aspect of the Spirit experience was on day 9 when we had to write letters to ourselves. We were told we could write anything, or nothing at all, but regardless the piece of paper would be mailed to us after our voyage.

I told myself to smile, to look out the window while I study and to really see outside; to see the blossom, to see Dad moving the stock up the lane, to see the road I've run many, many times. I told myself to give myself a break, to chill out, to breath and to remember that sometimes, as long as you know you you've given your all, accepting whatever result occurs is the best gift you can grant yourself. I told myself to remember the bigger picture, to not get caught up in the little things, and to enjoy life because what else is it there for? Why sell hours of your precious life away to pursuits that make you miserable? My letter had a lot of good advise in it, and I wish I had maybe read it more than a few times over the past years because it seems I have defiantly let the superficial side of life capture my mind at times. But if Spirit taught me anything it is that we live and we learn and tomorrow is always a new day and a new opportunity to make something better. So I consider myself lucky to be graced with daily opportunities to live out the rest of my life with the simple advice of my year 12 letter in mind.

As end-of-the-year exams came around so too did a new barrel of self-inflicted pressure. I already had an overall excellence endorsement which would secure me a scholarship to any New Zealand University, but I wanted to endorse all my individual subjects with excellence honours too, I knew I could do it … all it would take was a bit of hard work, and by work I mean two weeks of sitting in my room alone, the only slices of sanity, meal times and my two hour runs.

With the stress came the eating. Not ridiculous uncontrollable eating but the classic ‘oh-my-gosh-I-ate-a-whole-packet-of-chocolate-biscuits-today-while-I-couldn’t-do-physics’ sort of realization. I remember consciously amping up my runs to burn off the ‘bad food’ and I was almost relieved when I actually had an exam, even if it was physics or math because that meant three hours of sitting in the school hall without access to food. I often trained right after exams too and so I’d go and put my body through another 2 hours of rep sessions etc. doing this seemed to make up for the rubbish food I often succumbed to when a physics problem boggled me.

When exams were gone the stress was gone and my eating was very much normal again. School athletics nationals were always the week after exams had finished and so I would really stress about any extra food I had eaten during exam month …. How would this affect all my training for this race?! These thoughts pestered me. My eating habits were still healthy and normal but the thoughts seemed more sinister I felt more guilty about food in general than I used to and I remember weighing myself most days in the week leading up to nats. I think the planner within me wanted to know exactly what the formula to success was, and part of that formula was a race weight. I needed to know the number so if I had the perfect race at that weight - I could use that figure again as a target for next time… or maybe even as an upper limit for next time.

In New Zealand, there are really only two major races a year to prove your worth, and NZSS (New Zealand Secondary Schools) was one of them. I put so much pressure on it to be perfect, to be my "break out" race, that in 2014 it invariably went wrong.

It was a 1500m, the spectacle of distance racing, so much excitement at all times, only 3 and ¾ laps to make your mark and kick at precisely the right time. I was ready and waiting, ready to go.

Into the final lap we barrelled and then it all went wrong, the second and third runner tripped with 300 to go, we all got jammed up, I had to jump over girls and avoid getting spiked at the same time. By the time I'd physically and mentally cleared the chaos three of them were long gone and like the previous year I dragged myself in, in that dreaded 4th place.

I was in a weird depressive mood all day following the race, I felt cheated out of all my hard work, it wasn't the worst race ever, but damn it! I had so much more and I was annoyed I couldn’t show them that. Again in my mind, I was the try-hard kid that worked hard, but she’d never be enough for something like a college scholarship to the US or worthy of a NZ singlet - she should stop dreaming.

I was very hard on myself at times like this. Although self-discipline is a great personality trait it can spiral overboard. I feel extremely lucky to have had Lance my coach at times like this. He always had a way of putting everything into perspective. Before every race, he would tell me “Go in curious to see what you can do, go in hungry to show them what you can do, but have fun, enjoy it and remember whatever happens you’ll still be Hannah, your family will still love you and I’ll still love and respect you.”

This notion of “I’ll still be Hannah” seemed so obvious but as the years go on I realize just how important it is. Today running is a massive part of my life and at times I would say it is my life, but it is so important to separate oneself and place value from the sport and results. Because when your happiness relies on running a pace or time and you don't make that, you feel pretty rubbish. There is more to life than just running and winning, even in the last year as I have grown within myself, I was again made aware of this fact at my Conference Cross Country champs. I won the race, I felt so strong, and I was actually the heaviest weight I had been in over two years. Hence mentally I was in a pretty good place. Winning was great, don’t get me wrong I certainly wouldn't trade it for Second! But that night when we got back to campus, being the athlete I am declined going out to a Halloween party. And although I would probably still do the same thing again since our season was far from over. I sat at home happy with the win but feeling isolated from the pack. My friends were having fun and sharing in a life moment together while I was alone. That's the thing about winning you see - you can’t share it. And that makes it almost a bittersweet pill to swallow. Hence, it is imperative to get more out of the sport than just results because results will not fill you up on those lonely nights spent “being an athlete”.

Having said that …

The night after my disappointing 4th at 2014 Nats was the first night I’d ever really touched more a drop of alcohol and heck was it fun. I had never felt quite as free and content, I recall wandering the streets of Whanganui with the rest of the Southland team only half in touch with reality while discussing all of life's problems and then climbing the fence to the track to run one more lap. This time I executed the final lap I had originally planned. I ran at full speed in my leather converse around the top bend, increased speed even more down the back straight, eased off into the last turn and then hammered it 200% from the 150m mark all the way home, I even found another gear I didn’t know was there in the last 50m. I lay exhausted over the finish line looking up at the stars and Sir Peter Snell's bronze statue, why couldn’t I have shown them all that lap? Was the secret to running fast simply happiness? (Or perhaps pre-race wine was the way to go…?)

The next day the beauty of the wine had worn off and I sat with sunglasses shading my face in a rather dramatic nature for the three-hour van ride to the airport and then slept the rest of the journey home.

I don't really ever drink, even now, it’s simply not that appealing to me, but this was one of the rare times during high school I actually felt like I had real, true friends, and I think that's because it was the athletics team. They had all been there that day and some had also experienced horrible races, throws or jumps. We had a connection and an understanding. We saw each other as dedicated individuals, we knew each of us was more than the one performance we had displayed that weekend be it good or bad, and because of that we all felt supported, valued, and safe to be just “us” not “us-the-athlete.” When we all went out that evening I already felt so genuinely happy with their company … the wine just enhanced this...! (and the headache the next day …)